


Untethered

by Callmeisolde



Category: Daredevil (TV), The Defenders (Marvel TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Post-Episode: s01e08 The Defenders, Sad Ending, The Defenders (Marvel TV) Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-26
Updated: 2017-10-26
Packaged: 2019-01-23 14:28:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12509488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Callmeisolde/pseuds/Callmeisolde
Summary: The one where Matt ruins movies for Foggy, probably forever, and Foggy tries to outwit the system by employing some movie logic of his own.A stream of consciousness from Foggy's perspective set after The Defenders (spoilers).I'm sad, he's sad, we're all sad. My attempt to add a little something to Foggy's reasoning for distancing himself from his best friend.





	Untethered

“The city needs me in that mask,” Matt tells him, earnestly, honestly, and Foggy doesn’t need to hear his heartbeat to know that Matt believes it.

Maybe it’s true. Foggy had considered the idea before, debated it with Karen, argued it with Matt himself. Did the city need a vigilante? He had just finished making the funeral arrangements for Elena, drinking himself into a stupor. His grief still keen, a life was taken by insurmountable forces outside the control of the law. Hadn’t Karen just said, hours ago, she hoped Daredevil would find whoever hurt Elena and hurt them back? Hadn’t Foggy agreed?

Now it was all different, coloured by Matt’s own blood. Red words. Angry words. Words that grasped without understanding. Now Foggy didn’t think the city needed a vigilante — not as much as he needed his friend.

He recognized this story. He’d seen it before. Television, movies, comic books — Foggy was a connoisseur of the stuff. He could recognize the tropes from a mile away. His own superpower. The tragic hero pushes friends away to ‘protect them’. Good is not nice. Break their hearts to save them. Friendship is a weakness. Love is a vulnerability. Foggy used to love these stories. There goes Batman, he thinks, Han Solo, Anakin Skywalker. Ruined. Matt always had a way of ruining things.

“Foggy, please.” Matt’s not pushing Foggy away though. He’s not lying anymore. He’s begging Foggy to understand.

Foggy can see what’s happened. It's obvious really. Because Foggy had spent a lot of time watching movies, and he watched them all with Matt. It meant Foggy was pretty good at keeping up a running commentary. They had discussed the poor decision-making skills of superheroes and antiheroes and action heroes. They had laughed and lectured and insisted that, if put in a similar situation, they would make a different choice. Matt had made a different choice.

Instead of cutting the strings, he had tethered Daredevil to Matt Murdock, attorney at law. He had put down roots. Made friends. He had flown in the face of every surly mentor and wizened old man in his life that told him to cut all ties and forgo all softness -- he had chosen to have both. It was a strong choice, defiant, willful, a Matt Murdock kinda choice.

Now it's time for Foggy to make one of his own.

He’s a bloody lawyer, so he lines up the facts.

Consider first, for the defendant: there are lots of crazy, super-heroey things Daredevil can do.

Daredevil can track a shipment of heroin by smell as it moves from one end of the city to the other. He can take on a dozen thugs with guns. A dozen ninjas with swords. He can flip and fly and fling himself from rooftop to rooftop. He can isolate a heartbeat or a scream from blocks away. He can anticipate actions through the fluttering of a heartbeat or an intake of breath.

Daredevil can also do things unrelated to superpowers, just as crazy to Foggy. Daredevil can take a punch. Can force himself to run entirely on willpower. Daredevil can fall out a window or through a ceiling, land on his back and continue a fight. He can get stabbed six ways from Sunday and still, somehow, drag himself home.

But, hold on counselor, there are significant things Daredevil cannot do.

Daredevil isn’t bulletproof. He isn’t indestructible. Daredevil can’t get stabbed without bleeding. Evidence: he had bled all over Matt’s couch and his rug and Claire’s hands and Foggy’s hands. When Daredevil fell through a window and landed on his back, Matt's ribs cracked and his skin bruised. When he got hit in the head, Matt got a concussion. When he was slashed or stabbed or shot — there were real, ugly stitches and then real, angry scars.

Conclusion: Daredevil wasn’t just some character in some movie or comic book — he was Matt.

Foggy isn’t some vulnerability in the heel of the hero — he’s just Foggy.

He has to make a choice. An impossible choice.

He justifies all this to Matt, but Matt — stubborn as usual — isn’t very responsive.

This time it has something to do with the fact that he’s currently buried thirteen stories beneath Midland Circle. The empty grave, with it’s small, plain headstone inscribed with ‘In loving memory’ isn’t providing the comfort it’s supposed to and definitely not the repartee or the banter or even the counter-argument that Foggy wants in response to his carefully laid out explanation.

“Funerals are for the living,” Father Lantom had insisted when Karen balked at the idea of a token funeral.

“But there’s… there’s no body. We don’t know for sure…”

But it had been months and no amount of praying was bringing Matt back. So they made arrangements and they erected a stone and they said their words over it. Foggy regretted the decision, he regretted a lot of things, but this one is real and visceral and right now so it feels like the biggest, worst regret he has. 

The wind picks up, stirring the soft, freshly fallen snow that's settled over the grave. Karen’s footsteps crunch towards Foggy and he wipes furiously at his face. She drapes a comforting arm around his shoulders and interlaces her other hand through the crook of his arm.

He draws a shuddering breath and stamps his foot like a child, feeling just as petulant. “Damnit Murdock, I knew it! I knew this was coming.” He thinks again of the day he’d first discovered Matt’s secret. He had been so mad about the lies. So scared of the blood. So furious because he had seen _this_ very scenario like a premonition. He shouldn’t be feeling deja-vu at his best friends funeral, but there it is.

Foggy had made a calculated decision, after that big reveal. He wouldn’t be Matt’s vulnerability, and he wouldn’t let Matt be his.

If Foggy didn’t see the bruises, he wouldn’t have to guess what kinda ninja Matt had fought the night before. If he didn’t see the blood, he could assume Matt wasn’t getting bloodied. If Foggy didn’t watch the news, he wouldn’t have to hear about the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. If he didn’t read the paper, he didn’t have to wonder if the city needed a vigilante or not.

How’s this argument holding up Murdock?

If Foggy didn’t talk to Matt, Matt couldn’t justify his actions. If Foggy didn’t pick up the phone, he wouldn’t have to hear the excuses. If he didn’t have to say goodbye, no goodbye would be their last.

He mumbles something unintelligible and Karen gives his arm a squeeze.

“What was that Foggy?”

“It didn’t help.” his breath hitches and he swallows a sob. “I was sure — somehow — that distancing myself from him would make this… hurt less.”

So it didn’t work like it was supposed to in the movies. Foggy should have seen this coming. Every attempt the hero makes to distance himself from his loved ones is a mistake. The moral at the end of the story is usually the same. It hurt, but it was worth it to have been loved and to love.

Karen grimaces, is that a brave face she’s wearing? Foggy had been putting the same one on every day since Midland Circle. He recognizes the worn edges of the expression. They’re both fraying, becoming untethered. Like Matt. With no one left to lose.

There aren’t any words, so Karen and Foggy begin the trudge back to the street. The footprints of the other mourners have long been obscured by the soft blowing snow. They are just two black specks drifting slowly into white, soon to be enveloped and lost in the night.


End file.
